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VANCOUVER—Late in the second period of the Maple Leafs’ disastrous Saturday afternoon on the rainy West Coast, Frazer McLaren waved a white towel from the penalty box.

One assumes McLaren, the Toronto tough guy, was not attempting to relay the universal symbol of surrender; he was protesting what he felt was an unjust whistle on the boarding call that had put him in the clink. But if you were a Leaf fan, you would have been forgiven for just wanting Saturday’s game to end right there, with about 25 minutes to go in the proceedings. At that point the Leafs were down 3-0. They’d been wholly dominated on the shot counter and the puck-possession meter. In a performance Toronto head coach Randy Carlyle would later call “probably the worst game we played this year,” the visitors acted as though they’d thrown in the towel from the opening faceoff. But none of it really mattered. The 4-0 final score, Vancouver’s 47-21 shots-on-goal advantage, a list of statistical details that painted the Leafs in the ugliest of lights — none of it amounted to much more than irrelevant noise.

Toronto’s biggest loss on Saturday promises to be felt for weeks to come in vital man games. That’s because Leafs centre Dave Bolland, cut in the ankle region by Zack Kassian’s skate in an early-second-period collision, departed Rogers Arena strapped to a stretcher. Carlyle said Bolland had suffered a cut “similar” to the Achilles tendon injury that kept Ottawa Senators all-star Erik Karlsson out of action for most of three months last season. Unlike Karlsson, Bolland had been wearing Kevlar-type socks on Saturday, according to a club source. But the socks are cut-resistant, not cut-proof.

“He will have surgery (on Saturday night),” Carlyle said.

Toronto GM Dave Nonis called the setback “accidental.”

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“It would be hard for me to imagine how that was on purpose,” Nonis said. “Hopefully we’re getting (the injury bug) out of the way early. You’d like to think we’ve prepared well, guys were in good shape coming in, and they’ve all been freak injuries. Now we have to deal with ’em. But a lot of teams have to do it so I don’t think we can cry about it.”

The dart of bad luck left the Leafs with an even bigger hole at the centre position. Toronto had already been playing without the services of No. 1 Tyler Bozak, who missed his fourth straight game on Saturday with a lower-body injury. Heading into the game, Bozak and Bolland represented Toronto’s top two centremen as measured by time on ice per game. In many games during this promising early season, Bolland has been among the Leafs’ best players. How the club will fill that void is anyone’s guess.

On the upside, the Leafs still boast a 10-5 win-loss record. And they don’t play again until Friday night, when the New Jersey Devils visit the Air Canada Centre.

But Saturday’s game — which allowed Vancouver to extend its win streak against the Leafs to 11 games, the longest such run the Canucks have ever enjoyed against a single opponent — certainly cast a pall over a once-jubilant team. Though the Leafs were riding a three-game win streak and sitting atop the Eastern standings coming into the affair, Carlyle had warned of how the Canucks represented an impending step up in class from the teams in Edmonton and Calgary that the Leafs had dispatched on the opening two legs of their Western road swing.

“We’re going to have to play to a higher level than we’ve previously played this year, and specifically in the last couple of games,” Carlyle said.

On a Pacific afternoon on which the Leafs didn’t register their first shot on goal until the contest was more than eight minutes old, the game didn’t go a long way in convincing anyone that Toronto’s NHLers are an elite squad.

You could argue it all began to unravel for the Leafs the moment Vancouver’s Alex Burrows began to engage Phil Kessel in some first-period verbal jawing. Burrows, a noted agitator, made it his mission to pester Kessel, the Leafs’ leading scorer, from the get-go. And sure enough, before the first period was over, Burrows had baited Kessel into a rare fighting major — both players falling to the ice with their gloves removed before actual punches could be exchanged. For a team that sports a roster dotted with self-styled policemen, it was a major failure; if Toronto had the first period back, some tough Leaf would have delivered a message to Burrows that tangling with Kessel will not be tolerated.

Then again, the Leafs were having enough trouble just getting the puck back from a Vancouver club that dominated possession. The Leafs, who came into the game getting outshot by an average of 9.6 shots a game, gave up 40-plus shots for the third straight game on their Western swing.

The Canucks struck first about six minutes into the game when Daniel Sedin tipped in a point-blank shot from brother Henrik after Ryan Kesler fed the latter with a gorgeous between-the-legs touch pass across the crease a few seconds into a power play. A few minutes after Kassian made it 2-0, Chris Higgins beat Leafs starter James Reimer glove side to make it 3-0. Dan Hamhuis rounded out the scoring. Roberto Luongo registered the shutout.

The game was an occasion in more ways than one. The afternoon began with the jersey retirement ceremony of the No. 10 of Pavel Bure, the so-called Russian Rocket who played with the Canucks from 1991 to 1998. To mark the moment, the Canucks took their warmups wearing identical No. 10 sweaters. While Bure luxuriated in a long love-in, Pat Quinn, the Vancouver GM who drafted Bure in the days before he became Leafs coach and GM, also earned a standing ovation from the crowd.

For the Leafs, despite a 2-1 road trip, the affair left precisely nothing to celebrate and much to contemplate. How, for instance, would Nonis fill the void at centre? James van Riemsdyk said he’d be willing to slide over from the wing. David Clarkson said he’s played in the middle before.

“I might start stretching,” said Nonis, the 47-year-old former collegiate defenceman. “We’ll see. We’ll see where we end up.”

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